


Requiem for a wolf-girl and her bastard knight

by belasteals



Series: Songs for Lost Lives [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: F/M, Future Fic, POV Gendry, Reunions, This was supposed to be a happy reunion fic, that did not happen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-22
Updated: 2016-05-22
Packaged: 2018-06-09 22:14:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6925438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/belasteals/pseuds/belasteals
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The whispers are the loudest about the wolf-girl. She is beautiful, her aunt reborn; she is feral, stalking the halls at night and eating raw flesh. She is silent, speaking to no one from her place in the shadows; she is powerful, giving orders in a voice that calls forth thunder. They agree that she killed the Bastard of Bolton, with her sword, with her bare hands, with a spell, by turning into a wolf and ripping him to shreds. There is blood on her hands, everyone says, Ned Stark’s little girl with crimson fingers.<br/>(Or, six years later, Gendry rides north.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Requiem for a wolf-girl and her bastard knight

**Author's Note:**

> Edited 5/22/16 for grammar and spelling
> 
> If you think this has a happy ending, you haven't been paying attention.

He leaves everything behind when the whispers begin; the inn, the orphans, the Brotherhood. He takes only what he can carry, a sword at his side and a hammer on his back, and rides north, stopping too often only to hear the rumors grow and find the facts hidden underneath. The Starks are back in Winterfell, the smallfolk agree. The northmen have crowned the youngest, the wild boy, when his brother refused- his brother, who sees too much and knows too much and says strange things. The wild boy wears a crown but his auburn-haired sister rules, her and the wolf-girl.

The whispers are the loudest about the wolf-girl. She is beautiful, her aunt reborn; she is feral, stalking the halls at night and eating raw flesh. She is silent, speaking to no one from her place in the shadows; she is powerful, giving orders in a voice that calls forth thunder. They agree that she killed the Bastard of Bolton, with her sword, with her bare hands, with a spell, by turning into a wolf and ripping him to shreds. There is blood on her hands, everyone says, Ned Stark’s little girl with crimson fingers.

Gendry rides north, collecting whispers like a cloak, asking too many questions to be safe and not enough to be sure until he can’t bear the rumors anymore and rides day and night without stopping, without speaking. His horse is exhausted; he buys a new one and keeps riding.

He would have thought Winterfell another burned village like the thousand others he has passed, if not for the mass of people surrounding it and the direwolf banner overhead. A feeling settles in his gut that he refuses to acknowledge. He calls it exhaustion and shoves it away.

The Starks hold court the next day, the wild boy and his elder sister. King Rickon sits at the head of the room, a massive wolf at his feet, and says little, acknowledging each speaker but deferring to the Princess Sansa at his side.

The princess is beautiful, just as Gendry had always been told that she was. Her long auburn hair is loose down her back, held in place only by a circle of bone-white weirwood across her brow, matching her brother’s red curls and larger crown. Prince Bran, the greenseer, isn’t there, but Gendry knows he has the same Tully looks as the king and princess.

The wolf-girl isn’t there either. Gendry tells himself that he isn’t disappointed.

He listens for near two hours as the princess dispenses justice, makes decisions, accepts oaths of fealty. She defers to the Northern lords when appropriate and sets some matters aside to be discussed with her brothers, but mostly she rules. The smallfolk call her a Lannister queen when they feel uncharitable, but Gendry sees none of that. She’s as Northern as her brothers, as the wolf-girl, with winter in her blood and ice in her gaze.

“Ser Gendry of the Hollow Hill.”

He takes a deep breath as King Rickon beckons him forward, and bends down on one knee as he has practiced.

“Your Grace. Your Highness. I come to pledge my sword in the service of House Stark. I come as well as a blacksmith, to offer my services to Winterfell.” Suddenly, dizzily, he wonders why he is here at all, in a burned castle full of high lords, waiting for a girl who isn’t here and who won’t remember him in any case. The King in the North is speaking, reciting a vow Gendry has heard a dozen times today, and Gendry forces himself to swallow the urge to flee and look up at his liege lord.

The King finishes and Gendry bows, but Princess Sansa speaks before he can turn to leave.

“Ser Gendry, I have been absent from the North too long,” a whisper runs around the edges of the hall, but the pair on the dais seem not to hear, “but I fear I recognize neither your face nor your name. What brings a southron knight to the service of House Stark?”

A thousand answers flash through his brain- _fate, hope, your sister_ \- but before he selects one, he is interrupted by a voice he knows too well and not at all.

“He knew me, dear sister.” A shape steps out of the shadows on the king’s other side, and Gendry’s world stops.

She was nine when they met, rage pressed into the shape of a little girl. Now she’s a woman grown, five-and-ten. Her chestnut hair is long and curled, tied back in the northern style, where it had been chopped short. Her eyes are sharp steel where they had been stormclouds; she’s wiry muscle and hard edges where she had a child’s softness, and, later, thinness born of hunger. She still wears men’s clothes, but they are well-made and well-fitted, hinting at a woman’s body under leather and muscle. She wears a weirwood circlet to match her sister’s, but if Sansa is day, Arya is night.

He realizes suddenly that the whispers were all true. She is beauty and power, silence and grace, but she is the beauty of the wolf poised to kill, the silence of the knife nobody ever sees coming.

“He was my companion in the Riverlands, before the Red Wedding and Sandor Clegane. I will vouch for his loyalty and strength as warrior and smith.”

Princess Sansa inclines her head, and Gendry remembers to breath. “I offer you the thanks of House Stark, Ser Gendry, and welcome you to Winterfell. We are in need of knights and smiths. Winter is coming.” A smile ghosts over Arya’s lips. “One of our men will show you to the smithy, and to the knights’ quarters.”

“Thank you, your Grace, your Highnesses.” A soldier leads Gendry out at a nod from Sansa, and he watches Arya fade back into the shadows from the corner of his eye.

* * *

“Princess Arya has requested that you dine with her tonight.” The squire eyes him with mistrust, but Gendry has no choice but to follow the boy through the maze of hallways.

Arya has her back to him when he enters her solar. “Leave us,” she orders. The squire bows hastily, and the thick door creaks closed. “He’s afraid of me,” the princess remarks, and Gendry thinks he hears amusement in her voice.

She turns away from the window, finally, to look at him, and he has the distinct feeling that he’s being evaluated. He’s changed as well in the past six years- he’s taller and broader, more confident, and the veteran of a half-dozen skirmishes, but in front of her he’s four-and-ten again, not a man of twenty.

Her footsteps make no sound as she walks towards him, stopping a few steps away, and he can see her more properly in this light. A dagger is strapped to her side, but she’s otherwise unarmed. Gendry realizes in the back of his head that she probably wouldn’t need anything more to kill him.

“Your Highness,” his voice cracks slightly.

“Ser.” Her voice is even, emotionless.

Another long moment passes. Gendry takes a deep breath, and another, before speaking.

“Is ‘Your Highness’ better or worse than m’lady?”

She smiles, and it’s so sad that he feels his heart break.

“Worse, I think.” Suddenly, without warning, she springs forward. The half-formed fear that she’ll stab him flees from his mind as she wraps her arms around him, and he hugs her back, pulling her closer so that her face is buried in his chest. He shouldn’t be hugging a Princess of the North, but for the first time in six years, he feels _right._

“I figured you were dead,” she whispers, voice muffled by his tunic.

“I’m too stubborn to die,” he says, and she _laughs_ , a real laugh, and his heart soars. They release each other, and he misses her in his arms already, but she leads them to the chairs in the corner of the room and motions for him to sit.

“I looked for you, after the Hound took you. I looked for days, until Thoros dragged me back. Then the Red Wedding happened, and people said you were there-” Gendry’s voice breaks.

“I was outside the gates when it happened. We were too late.”

“Later they said you married the Bastard of Bolton. I told them no, Arya would run him through before he could touch her. I had to believe that it wasn’t you.”

Arya was looking at him, but her eyes were distant. “I was in Braavos. I thought there was nothing left for me here.”

 _I was here._ “You’re home now.”

“I’m not the same person I was, Gendry.”

“None of us are.”

“No.” Her hand tightens on the arm of her chair, her knuckles turning white. “Gendry, I… I’ve done terrible things. Seen terrible things. I’m not the person you remember.”

He reaches out, slowly, and puts his hand over hers, any sense of propriety gone. “We were children. We’re not, anymore. War changes people, Your Highness-”

“Call me Arya, damn you,” she snaps. “It’s always Your Highness this, Your Highness that, how can we serve the princess, we have to protect the princess, as if I don’t have more blood on my hands than half the men in this castle.”

“Arya.” The woman in front of him is a warrior, but he sees only the scared little girl he knew. He repeats her name. “Arya.”

“Gendry.” She sighs, closing her eyes and leaning back in her chair. “I’m glad you’re here.” The moment is gone; she’s a Northern princess once again.

“Me too.”

“There’s a war coming, you know. A worse one. Up north.”

“Aye. The Southron lords don’t believe it.”

“They will.”

There are things he has to tell her, about the whispers in the south, about Lady Stoneheart. Instead they speak of the future, of when they’ll ride north, of the news her bastard brother sends from the Wall. He stays longer than is proper, until he finally begs exhaustion and tells her goodnight. He doesn’t even realize how close they've been sitting until he leaves.

* * *

He dines with her most nights, when she isn’t with her family. He works during the day, forging weapons and armor for a war that hasn’t begun to replace the damaged ones from a war that hasn’t ended. She visits him sometimes. They never speak in the forge. He works, she watches in silence. So much of what she does is in silence.

“She didn’t smile until you came.”

Gendry lays down his hammer and wipes the sweat from his brow. “Princess Sansa.” The woman stands in the doorway of the forge, careful of the mess the way Arya never is.

“I apologize for interrupting you, Ser Gendry, but we have matters to discuss.”

“Yes, Your Highness.”

“Walk with me.” He follows her outside. Gendry recognizes their path before they reach the godswood; he finds Arya here often.

Sansa stops to admire one of the trees before speaking. “Arya’s happy when you’re with her. She hasn’t been happy in a long time.”

“Her Highness was a dear friend of mine.”

She waves her hand at him. “You call her Arya to her face, you can use her name in front of me as well. Gods know she hates titles.” Sansa turns to look at him. “Some of the younger lords say your relationship with her is improper.”

“It’s not. I would never dishonor her.”

“I know that. You wouldn’t say no to her, though.” He starts to protest, but she interrupts. “You don’t have to defend yourself to me. Arya does as she wishes, and neither she nor I wish to fight like children. She’s not to be controlled, not by me, or Rickon, or anyone. What she does is her business.” She laughs. “She’d never let herself be married off to some lord, princess or no.”

“No, I don’t think she would.”

She looks at him, serious again. “I want you to be her sworn sword.”

It’s not proper. Sworn swords are knights from noble houses, not bastard smiths- but Sansa’s sworn sword is a woman, the lady Brienne, and Prince Bran is accompanied by the Reed girl day and night, and Gendry supposes _proper_ isn’t a word for Arya and him anyway.

“If you think Arya needs protection then you don’t know her very well. Your Highness.”

“Of course she doesn’t. She’s likely to stab me just for suggesting it. But a sworn sword spends more time with his liege than a simple knight does, and you’re good for her.” Sansa smiles. “If you say no, I’ll stick her with some stuffy Northern knight, and she’ll probably kill him.”

“Then, for the sake of your stuffy Northern knight, I will accept.”

* * *

He tells her about Lady Stoneheart eventually. He keeps that secret for too long, and when he tells her they have a proper fight for the first time, screaming and cursing. She rides south the next day, and sworn sword or no, she’ll not have him along. She’s gone for three weeks.

She stops talking when she returns, and the whispers grow louder. Wild, feral, a killer. Nobody knows who she went south to see, nobody except Gendry and Sansa, and Bran who knows everything. Everyone knows she comes back silent and angry, like she was the first time she returned.

She sends him away when she sees him in the doorway, but he doesn’t move.

“Arya. We have to talk about it.”

Silence.

“I’m not leaving. We’re done leaving each other, the pair of us.”

She turns to glare at him, but her face crumples, and she lets him hold her even as she says she hates him. The venom from the last time they spoke is gone; her voice cracks from disuse when she’s cried herself out into his chest.

“I wanted her to come home. I thought I could make it better.”

“I know.”

“She wasn’t my mother. Not really. My mother died at the Twins.”

“Shh. I know,” he whispers into her hair.

They stand there, silent, for a long time as he holds her like he did on that first day. Then she speaks again. “I had to kill her.”

His heart shatters. “Arya-”

She shakes her head, stepping out of his arms and towards the table. “We have work to do. Jon wants us to come north soon, but we don’t have the provisions for an army.” She rolls out one of her maps, staking it to the table with her dagger. Gendry hates this, hates that she’s planning a war at nearly six-and-ten, hates that she pushes him away the moment she feels vulnerable.

He hates that he’s falling in love with her, him a lowborn bastard and her the sister of his king.

If she can bury her heart in talk of swords and saddlebags, so can he, and he stays most of the night, planning for an army he isn’t sure they have yet.

“Gendry,” she interrupts him as he makes to leave. He watches her struggle with her words before she speaks again. “I don’t want to be alone. Stay with me.”

He hates that Sansa is right, that he won’t say no to her, but he stays.

* * *

The winter wind is biting, and Gendry can feel the cold settling in his bones. His life revolves around fire- the blaze of the forge, the flame that is Arya Stark- and the cold is too unnatural for him. Arya laughs, says he complains like a southron lordling, but the cold gets to her as well as they march through the Wall and towards the end of the world.

The bastard brother joins them, and Gendry can see the Stark look in him as well. He has the same dark, curly hair, the same grey eyes that seem colorless under the winter skies. Arya has easy smiles for him, the smiles she usually shows only to Gendry, but he’ll not be jealous of his princess and her brother. Not when Arya once grins at both of them and calls them _her bastards_ , and for once the title seems like a benediction instead of a curse.

They lose too many men in the first battle. Jon Snow has a gash down his arm that has Arya chewing her lip, even though the healer with them says he’ll be fine. They burn the bodies, even though the flames will attract more of _them_ , and Gendry fears deep in his heart that this war cannot be won.

She comes to him that night, in the leftover heat of the pyres. Her kiss in full of fear and desperation, and he half-wonders if she’s trying to kiss courage back into herself, but then her arms are around him and he wonders nothing at all. She kisses him long and hard, until the tears begin to flow down her face and he has to pull away from her just so they can breathe.

She walks away. They never speak of it.

* * *

She gives her life for the North, the land she will never return to.

He gives his life for her, the princess he will never have.

* * *

The songs are pretty, Sansa supposes, even if they’re not true. She learned that a long time ago, a prisoner in a different court to a different king. She learned it double when they light the pyre for a girl who should have lived.

The minstrels say that they died holding hands, the princess and her sworn sword. The story grows; they died clinging to each other, surrounded by the already dead. They died with his body over hers, protecting her until the last.

It’s not true. They never held hands.

The wolf-girl and her bastard knight make for good songs, but Arya and Gendry had never believed in happy endings.

**Author's Note:**

> This is now part one of a series, because I can't leave it well enough alone.


End file.
